FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER III:
[4] Ragozin, Assyria.
[5] Layard, Nineveh, vol. i., p. 249 n. Humboldt, Cosmos, vol. ii., ch. 5.
[6] The name Tigris, which we adopted from Western historians, is the mutilated version of the Medic “tighra,” modern Persian and Kurdish “tir,” an arrow.
CHAPTER IV
DOWN THE TIGRIS TO MOSUL
Diarbekr at first sight strikes the stranger as a remarkably clean, bright, busy city, with streets unusually broad for the East, enormous bazaars, not roofed as in other Oriental cities, but merely rows of windowless shops lining the ways. Two main thoroughfares intersect the town at right angles, with gates at each end, and the whole is surrounded by the huge wall of basalt built in its present form by Justinian. The population seems for the most part Kurd, wild men of great stature, from the north and east, with high felt hats, like those of the ancient Persians of the Sasanian sculptures, their zouave jackets of sheepskin with the hair outside, the scarlet shoes forming parts of a distinctive costume. The fierce look that a Kurd invariably acquires, the thin bony face, the long stride, mark the hillman, who walks in these peaceable, if noisy, streets with a hand on his rifle and dagger.
We put up in a two-storeyed caravanserai, near the north gate, a place clean and roomy, boasting the luxury of glass to its windows, one or two of which contained a chair and table. These were not for Kurdish Hajis, however, and I humbly took my upper room, thankful that I had a window whence I could survey the lordly effendi as he crossed the yard to his “European” room. Upon the board floor (another luxury this, in a country whose floors are of mud) I spread my rag of carpet and threw my bedding, and, following the coachman, retired to a coffee-house outside for a cup of tea, and the ordeal of questions that pour upon the stranger.
A SCORPION DOCTOR
The coffee-house was a big barn-like place, black with the smoke of innumerable water-pipes, and furnished with broad benches, just too high to sit on and let one’s feet touch the ground. They are, of course, made to be squatted upon. The place was very full, and we had to squeeze in on one already occupied; and I found myself next a holy man, a yellow individual in the long cloak denoting a priest, and the green turban that is the sign of a Sayyid, or descendant of the Prophet. This sanctity of course called for greetings from us, the plebeians, the insignificant, and with humility we tendered our “Salamun ’alaikum,” receiving the “’Alaikum as salam” in sonorous tones before we sat down.
The first questions came quickly enough.